Educating the Educators

Saturday marked the end of the 2006 Science Teachers’ Workshop, so a report is in order. The Virginia Section of the American Nuclear Society, the Virginia Chapter of the Health Physics Society, and North American Young Generation in Nuclear sponsored this three-day workshop, which was held at Virginia Commonwealth University. Here are my personal reactions.

It was fun! We had about 45 interested, open-minded individuals, and they were appreciative of the effort we had made. I’m hopeful that the workshop will be helpful for their lesson preparations.

It was educational! Naturally, it was educational for the students (the science teachers) but it was also educational for the instructors (the nuclear professionals who presented the workshop). It is often said that the best way to learn a subject is to teach it, and I found that to be true. Preparing a lecture on radioactive waste management required me to brush up on my facts and figures, try to put historical events in perspective, and think about what is of interest to the general public. It also provided an excuse for me to do some simple calculations that I had never done because they were not necessary for my work.

For example, I found that about 22 grams of matter are converted to energy during irradiation of a typical modern PWR fuel assembly, and that about 87% of the fission products decay to stability within one year after that fuel assembly is discharged from the reactor. From my visit to the North Anna Nuclear Information Center, I learned that Dominion’s largest customer is not the Pentagon or the Newport News shipyard, but America Online. It makes you think that conservation-minded Al Gore might need to apologize for inventing the Internet.

It was a lot of work! I did not help with the detailed planning, so it was impressive to see the lectures, breaks, meals, and tours proceed smoothly. The number of details that were considered was staggering.

I would like to express my thanks to the various sponsorsof the event, which ranged from big corporations to small businesses and individuals. Many volunteers also contributed to the workshop at levels of participation from trivial to heroic. My contribution was hardly heroic, but it included preparing a lecture and attending the entire workshop to help out with odd jobs. I hope we will hear some reports from the heroes.

Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Power, Energy, Technology, Environment, Electricity, Education, Dominion Virginia Power, VCU, America Online